installing NLTK

[Benjamin Kaplan]

On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 1:57 PM, Nige Danton <nige.danton at nospam.com> wrote:
> Hans Mulder <hansmu at xs4all.nl> wrote:
>> On 17/06/11 21:58:53, Nige Danton wrote:
>>> Mac OSX python 2.6.1: I'm trying to install the natural language toolkit
>>> and following the instructions here www.NLTK.org/download I've downloaded
>>> the PyYAML package and in a terminal window tried to install it. However
>
>> You're not really giving us enough information, so I'll just guess:
>
> Sorry.
>
>> Are you trying a command that begins with "sudo"?
>
> Good guess. Yes it's sudo python setup.py install
>
>> If so, then you user password should work, provided you're a member
>> of the 'admin' group.  To find out, type "groups" in a Terminal
>> window.  If the response does not include "admin" as a separate
>
> Ok, thanks. Tried that and the response does not include admin nor my user
> name
>
>> word, then you''l have to ask someone to give you admin rights.
>
> It's a personal computer - there is no one to ask.
>
> When I try my user password the reply is that it's not in the sudoers file
> and the admin password it just rejects. Any idea what I should do?
>
> --
> Nige Danton - Replace the obvious with g.m.a.i.l

You need to switch to the admin user. Sudo will only accept your own
password, and only if you're in the "sudoers" file. If you don't want
to log out, you can use the "su admin" command to change to admin
within that shell- that one is expecting your admin password. Then as
the admin, do the sudo python setup.py install and enter your admin
password again.

The point in all this is that your admin isn't actually an admin.
There is only one account on the computer that actually has access to
the core system files and that's "root". "sudo" is a command that lets
you execute a command as another user by entering your own password.
If you don't specify a user, it defaults to using root. An "admin"
account on a Unix system is just an account with permission to use the
sudo command.